


[go with it, stay with it]

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: [to see you there] [28]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Ballet, Bucky and Natasha becoming prickly spiritual twins, Everyone Has Issues, Gen, I swear to god Clint Barton is the most allistic character I have ever written, Natasha has issues, Natasha's Psychological Expertise, Pierce died too quick, developmental trauma, the Avengers as a functional social-emotional unit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 13:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7270732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This almost certainly counts as the most direct, specific question of this kind Steve's ever asked her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[go with it, stay with it]

**Author's Note:**

> Shares time with [scattered around on the floor are all my thoughts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6270277).

The text from Steve reads, _how do you make something Allowed WITHOUT bringing it up?_ and for a good thirty seconds Natalia just blinks at it. 

It'd arrived about fifteen minutes ago. She hadn't heard it: the music had been much too loud and she had the phone on vibrate. For that matter, she would've ignored it even if she didn't - so completely, in fact, that it would have more or less still counted as "not hearing it." She brings her phone with her, into her private studio, but only in case she _wants_ to look at it, or use it, or look something up. If _she_ wanted it, leaving it outside would be annoying - she'd have to leave to get it. So she brings it, in case she does. Otherwise, she ignores it. 

Anything truly urgent, JARVIS would alert her - anything _that_ urgent would light up the Tower anyway. Anything nearly that urgent, well: anyone who would expect her to respond within minutes also knows what number to call if her cell doesn't reach her. There's no one out there with that kind of call on her who doesn't. 

There aren't a lot of people left out there with that kind of call on her at all. 

So the text sits for fifteen minutes before she gets to it - before she knows who it's from, let alone what it says. Not until she gets up to turn the music off, decides she's done here, that she's gotten as much as she can out of this time and this space and she needs to stop before she regrets it. Not till then does she pick up the phone and wake up the screen to glance at it. 

And then . . .blink at it. Assimilating the unexpected, confirming that it says what she thinks it says, and then putting it back down for a moment. 

She ruffles her fingers through her hair, shakes it back from her face and frees the wisps that stick to her temples. The sweat is drying on her skin, cooling as it evaporates. She keeps the studio cooler than the rest of the suite, since Clint's the only other person ever in here, and he doesn't so much bitch as pointedly wrap himself in a blanket, off in the little carpeted area by the door where the beanbag chairs are. And only some of the time, and mostly only for the satisfaction of bitching - if he really minded that much he could change it himself. 

Instead he just stores blankets over on the bean-bag chairs, which are basically there for him. Although Natalia does like them. Likes how they look, the feeling they give. She saw them first in LA, in a small dance studio meant just for kids - there was a little watching area for waiting parents - and they'd charmed her, so she'd decided to put them in here. 

And they're nice. They're good for curling in, on days when just one more level of separation between her and the rest of the world would be nice. When she just wants to _be_ in here, alone, even for twenty minutes. She did that earlier, before she decided to actually change into something she could move in and come back. 

Natalia ends up feeling like that more often these days. Or at least, she feels like she does - sometimes she thinks it's more that she just _notices_ more often. And that her response is to try and soothe the feeling away, instead of burying it in work and ignoring it until it either dissipates or becomes so intense that it morphs into something else, a different shape and a different necessary treatment. That her impulse now is to try to feel _better_ , instead of just . . .not feeling _that_. 

In point of fact, if she runs the thought through the way Dr Czajkowski would think (her, or really any of the other SHIELD psychiatrists allowed within five hundred metres of agents above Level Four), the second option seems more and more likely. Is probably the truth. 

As if, having found out what it's like to _have_ more equilibrium, she's less tolerant of its lack. Which is probably a good sign, in that obnoxious way common to so many "good signs" when it comes to the inside of her head. The one that really _feels_ like it's everything a bit worse. 

The thought brings her back to Steve's text. 

She stares at it again, but she can't seem to think about it right in here. That happens, sometimes - she made this the place where she doesn't have to perform, and that means sometimes there's some part of her that resists even trying while she's here. It refuses to settle back, to let her reach out and take on a personality that really _isn't_ hers - any one of hers. It gets hard to think like anyone she hasn't actually _been_.

So Natalia sighs, then puts the screen to sleep, rolls from cross-legged onto her knees and then back off her knees onto her feet, and puts the music-station to sleep as well. She turns out the light when she leaves the studio. 

She could have had all of that in an integrated panel by the door or some other elegant, minimalist, high-tech and very functional option, but she doesn't want that: instead she has a media console with a CD player and a dock for an MP3 player, and speakers in each corner, and she uses a remote control instead of voice-commands. 

She's not trying to evoke her childhood, because that would be insane. And (Czajkowski's voice in her head again) indicative of significant pathology. But again, she doesn't even want it. There is actually nothing that she's ever been able to think of from her childhood she'd _choose_ to echo, and that was true before she even knew, consciously, how fucked up it really was. 

There's sure as fuck nothing comforting about it and nothing even remotely soothing. 

No, all the echoes are of the first studios she encountered after coming to SHIELD. When she'd found herself - for the first time - with choices about what to do and what not to, with time designated as her own. She'd looked into quite a few dance studios back then, because when you're overwhelmed by the terrifying flood and wreckage and free-fall that is the vast alien landscape other people call "freedom", you cling to a few spars of wreckage of your past life that are familiar, recognizable, and maybe even loved. And this was one of those. 

As it happens, all the studios she'd looked into had been a loss. All of them. It wasn't their fault, either. No, what Natalia'd found out very, very quickly was that that unless it was for an op (because everything's different then), even the _idea_ that anyone could be watching her dance made her want to crawl up her own spine and stab people until they stopped. 

The idea in a sort of hazy, nebulous way had been okay, to start with - that's why she'd bothered looking at all. But as soon as the idea shifted from that nebulous hypothetical _thing_ into something where thinking about it meant she was preparing to _do_ it, every part of her _screamed_ that she'd rather cut her own throat, but that she'd cut a lot of other people's _first_. 

Czajkowski'd remarked, once, that it was almost as if her mind had diverted all of the aversion she could have developed to anything else into that one thing. They'd been talking about sex, or more accurately why sex might be a concern and how it turned out it wasn't when they got there in the first place, so that bit is obvious: the displacement of sexual performance into artistic performance. But as time went on a lot of other things had struck Natalia as the same. Living arrangements. Hierarchies. Relationships that had nothing to do with sex. Places, songs, movies, cultural icons - hell, the job itself. 

None of those been a problem, not one, but dance for anything other than a cover . . . 

And for the job it didn't matter, because _she_ wasn't performing. She'd unbraided that one. Natalie Rushman could be trained in classical ballet and it didn't matter, because that was Natalie Rushman letting people watch her, changing herself to suit what they wanted. 

In Czajkowski's office, at all of nineteen, Natalia had considered the other woman for an almost uncomfortable amount of time and then told her, _I think I know why. But I don't think I'm interested in telling you._

And Amanda Czajkowski had said, _Okay_ , and moved on to something else, passing that particular test. 

Besides, as far as these things went, she counts it a blessing: it doesn't interfere with her life or her work, she can easily tuck this little part of her away from everyone else, so it's not a problem. She'd just dropped the idea of it being anything other than totally private like a hot rock, and moved on. But she still remembers the spaces she visited while she tried with a certain amount of fondness, because they'd been about possibilities, and that's what she wanted here. 

That thought _also_ brings her back to Steve's text, except now she's out into the rest of her suite and her subconscious doesn't rebel at even turning the idea over in her mind.

Natalia veers to the kitchen, on impulse. She pulls water out of the fridge and then turns to boost herself up to sit on the countertop of the island in the centre of the kitchen, cross her legs, and wake her phone back up. 

Now, when she opens the text app, she takes in the whole thing, what's actually two texts: _how do you make something Allowed WITHOUT bringing it up?_ and then a little later by the timestamp, __ever?__

It's a bit unexpected. No, more than a bit. 

This almost certainly counts as the most direct, specific question of this kind Steve's ever asked her, for one. The only reason she can't say for sure is how unstable _she_ was, in the first several months. It doesn't make the memories unreliable so much as . . .badly filed. She probably remembers; if he mentioned what he'd asked, she'd probably find the memory. She just can't find it right now. And she doesn't really cherish the idea of spending enough time dwelling on those weeks and months to change that. 

But she's fairly certain her impression wouldn't change even if she did: he's never been this direct before. This isn't how Steve comes at these things, for . . . a lot of reasons, actually. 

Steve just hates asking for help, for starters. Or admitting he doesn't know something. The more important it is - to him, and that scale may or may not have _anything_ to do with how important it is to anyone else - the more he hates it. It's typically Steve Rogers that his reasoning has more to do with being disappointed in himself that he's not perfect (the idiot) than distaste at the idea of being perceived as ignorant, but it still ends up in the same place as it would if it were over ego and embarrassment: with him talking around things and bringing them up obliquely, trying as best he can to subtly steer the conversation in that direction. 

It's Steve: that's never very subtle. But he still tries. 

Even when he's got that part under control, and Natalia will admit he's getting better at it, there's also the bit where he doesn't want to ask this kind of question, ever, because he still hates all the implications like poison (which is fine) and still teeters on the edge of being totally fucking terrified of them (which isn't quite as fine, but so far he handles it as well as anyone could). He doesn't want this kind of power: he never has and hopefully he never will. So it always takes him a bit to brace himself against the unhappiness that comes with having to admit he has it, whether he wants it or not, and he can't give it up, and he can't ignore it because if _doesn't_ want to use it thoughtlessly, he has to know it's there. Keep it under control. Know every place it could be at play and actively balance that out somehow. 

So there's a subconscious impulse to see if he can get his answer without having his face rubbed in that again. Natalia had thought she'd have to train that out of him, but so far it _seems_ like Steve's one of the people who have three states of dealing with things they know but don't like, instead of two: engaging with it, ignoring it, _and_ \- for a particular kind of person - weaving it into the background understanding of their every moment while holding it at arms' length, where it hurts less. 

Where it's not that you don't know that there's an elephant in the room, it's just that while the elephant is right there, taking up room and bringing in the general unpleasant smell of elephants, you can't get rid of it, and constantly thinking about the elephant just makes you miserable, so as much as you can you just . . . adjust your life to deal with the elephant's presence, and try to pay attention to other things. It also the kind of thing, really, that you'd almost have to develop in self-defense if your entire life comes with the metaphorical elephant of how likely it is you'll drop dead before you can legally buy a beer. 

But since he can, he has to work himself up to letting go of that little defense mechanism and face the whole issue head-on again. 

Plus, to top all _that_ off, he's defensive about what he thinks it could expose about James and expose James _to_ , even in other people's heads, and what people might think, and what people might think _he_ thinks. Because fuck knows there are a lot of things Steve misses, but he's never been unaware of what other people think of him. Or indifferent to it. He thinks he is, in a way, but that's not indifference: it's that the people who don't like him are people he _wants_ not to like him, because he doesn't like them anyway for one reason or another, so pissing them off and earning their bile just means he's doing a good job. 

So he worries, subconsciously. Not, this time, so much about what people think of _him_ but what people might think of James, or think Steve thinks of James, just to get a bit more convoluted than Steve can instinctively track. He worries even when it's Natalia, because that kind of thing isn't really rational. 

Or so she charitably reminds herself when she wants to smack him upside the head. Or _answer_ that subconscious defensiveness with things it really isn't productive to say, even if they are true. 

And then of course there's the last thing, the very last thing. This one hadn't even occurred to her her till recently, until a train of thought starting at hair-dye and going all over the place stopped by long enough to ring the bell, but: Natalia has the growing suspicion Steve doesn't want to imply - even accidentally -that he thinks of her past, her life, as a tool he can use. That he just does not want to imply that it makes her knowledge a resource to exploit, because he's afraid it means he's exploiting _her_ \- or trying to. 

It's kind of sweet - silly, and impractical, but sweet. 

And he just threw _all_ of that out the window, with one straightforward, and mostly simple, question. 

Natalia honestly wonders what the fuck could rattle him _that_ much, while at the same time being . . . well, small enough in scale that he doesn't feel the need to give her ten minutes of background. That part isn't what she counts as him trying to be oblique: the oblique comes before that, working up to admitting he wants to ask her something and what it's generally about. 

But usually once he's willing to do that, to getting around to asking - to get him that far, usually it's . . . big, and snarled up, and frankly she _needs_ the whole damn story, all of the context, and they both know it. She can only give him any answer if she knows enough of the details. 

Whatever this is, it's made him angry enough that pragmatism's finally burned through sensibility - but it's also small enough that it can fit in one question. 

One with a pretty simple answer, actually. Natalia's not sure what the fuck the impetus could _be_ , but at least the answer's easy enough. 

She types back, _Facilitate it._ And then out loud she says, "JARVIS?" 

"Yes, Ms Romanova?" comes the prompt, politely attentive reply from somewhere near the ceiling. Natalia's always been slightly charmed by JARVIS' perpetual adherence to formal address - almost more so, really, since SHIELD's disintegration made "agent" inappropriate - and this time is no different. She feels the slight smile touch her mouth before she speaks again.

"Was Steve working with Clint in the training gym this morning?" she asks. It's not the _only_ possible reason Steve could have tripped over something, and something big. There are lots of them. But in the name of starting somewhere, she starts with that. 

She also finishes the bottle of water, and realizes she either needs a shower, or to go do something else that would make showering now pointless. 

"Yes, in the early afternoon," JARVIS replies. "Captain Rogers left the Tower slightly over sixty minutes ago, Mr Barton twenty-eight." 

Natalia's mouth quirks: she doesn't think she's just imagining the slight ironic twist that JARVIS always sticks on the _Mr_ in front of _Barton_. 

She stares at the text screen again, and then impulsively adds, _*Personally*_. 

She probably doesn't need to, not if he's willing to cut the crap and ask, willing to just accept that its something he does or doesn't do that's going to make the difference. But it is important. It's the only way to balance between making it clear that something's _permitted_ , and making it _obligatory_ \- which is what it would be, if Steve _says_ anything. And he knows that, or he wouldn't ask. 

It's a hard fucking line, and honestly Natalia doesn't think she's ever seen anyone having to walk such a narrow one, before Steve started with this. There's usually more room for error. Easier to keep your balance. Fewer deadly explosions if you fall off. 

So she does add that last word, to make sure he gets it. 

Then she leans back against her cupboards and sighs, and decides she needs to go hit something. 

 

When Natalia gets down to the gym informally known as the Cube, she discovers that Tony needed to hit things, too. 

It's not _officially_ a private gym, although it might also not be fair to call it a gym. It's a big square room, a cube of space - hence the name. And fundamentally, that's it. It's a big space - not as big as the grown-up jungle-gym, but big enough - to house the collection of _things_ you need if your reasons for training include injuring or killing people, with multiple broad categories of weaponry, over somewhat unpredictable terrain. 

Particular specialists in StarkSec will use it occasionally, though usually when under Maria's direct orders, because they tend to find the whole thing intimidating. And if you work in the Tower and really _want_ to use the gym marked _advanced integrated close-quarters combat-training optimized, equipment used at own risk_ , you can apply for access. 

Oddly enough, not many people do. 

But mostly, it's just a big box with all of the things you need to practice how to kill people, or stop them from killing you. And some things - like the strike machines, which are of course Tony's personal improved variation on the ones everyone else can buy - that you don't _need_ but are, Natalia will admit, nice to have. 

There's also a bunch of screens with continually updated read-outs for your heart-rate, breathing rate, and all kinds of other things that add up to this room having the most _intensive_ out-of-body monitoring Natasha's ever come across. Unsurprisingly, James avoids it; also unsurprisingly, Natalia finds it unbelievably fucking useful. 

What she'd've given to have had _that_ available through all her time with SHIELD. 

When Natalia hits the door-pad and steps in, Tony's beating up the strike-training machine. That's pretty much the description for it, too. He's hitting like he has a grudge, face set in the not-quite-scowl that implies he really is upset about something. 

Natalia wonders what. There's been nothing on the news that would normally twig, and Natalia _hasn't_ got any caustic side-comments on her phone from Pepper so she doesn't think it's a company thing. 

Granted it's Tony: that still leaves so, so many things he could work himself up about, up to and including "I haven't magically fixed all of humanity's problems yet so that means I'm the worst human waste imaginable", because never let it be said that Tony's sense of his own capabilities and bred-in Stark-model control-freak nature can't follow him all the way to his self-loathing and violently negative self-talk. Or self-abuse. Whatever you wanted to call it.

But Natalia always wonders what's going on with other people, when she can see something is. It's built in by now. 

The Cube has traditional dummies, targets and punching bags, but there's also the machines. They're not bad, and they're nice to have, but to start with they seemed oddly out of place given how everything else could be moved around and rearranged, and there they were. If not totally static, at least more of a pain to shift. 

Natalia figured out why pretty quickly. They're useful, but they're necessary for _Tony_ , specifically. Steve and Clint can both come in here and hit the hanging bags until something breaks (the bad mood, the bag, or the tolerance of their tendons for what they're doing to them), if admittedly not the _same_ bag, and Natalia can do the same either on the firing range or here, with knives and the targets, but Tony - 

Tony's brain runs on two settings, "off" and "three thousand miles an hour", and if _he's_ the one deciding where to hit, where to throw, it doesn't give him the same mindless calm it gives the rest of them, it just gives his brain even more space to wind itself in knots. It doesn't make his thoughts shut up, it just destroys his ability to control them at all, and that's worse than doing nothing. 

If the machine's throwing patterns at him instead, he has to pay attention, has to react, and _then_ he can zone out. 

He ignores her when she comes in, but that's not surprising. She wonders if there's something in the air: she's Off, Tony's punching his mood in the face, Steve's seething - if Natalia were actually inclined to magical thinking, all of that would certainly be prompting it. 

But for her part Natalia just watches Tony for a second, and frowns. 

"You're dropping your right," she tells him, pitching her voice loud enough to be heard over the machine's prompts. "Stop it." 

She could probably have been a bit more diplomatic, but honestly Tony wouldn't believe it from her anyway. She'd warned Nick about that, back during the mess with Vanko and the palladium poisoning, pointing out that if she blew her cover with Stark she was blowing her ability to manipulate him. _Ever_. And she'd been right. 

These days they have a detente, a comradeship and what might even be a friendship, but it's grounded in one very important understanding: that he knows what she is, exactly what she is, exactly what she can do, and he is _choosing_ to keep his guard down on the understanding that she will choose not to make him regret it. 

It's not that hard; easier than with James, by light-years. With Tony she treats him like a colleague, and he and she both know when the other is throwing up defenses, or deflecting, and they both let it go unless it's for a reason - or, admittedly, either of them's really having a bad day. With Tony it's enough to let him see that she's not letting him see something. With James it isn't. 

But Tony still wouldn't believe her if she were gentler with the criticism - he'd hear the bluntness anyway, so why waste the effort? 

Her comment makes him turn to look blankly at her, one hand reaching out to hit _pause_ on the machine's screen with his thumb. 

"What?" he demands, the not-quite-a-scowl turning into a real one. 

Natalia sits down on one of the short benches right by the doors, folding a square of cloth in half to wrap around her head for a kerchief to keep her hair out of her eyes. "You drop your right every time you throw a left hook," she informs him as she does so.

For a minute it still looks like Tony's struggling to understand her, like she'd spoken in Russian instead of English. She stares back, eyebrows raised, until it seems to click. Then the scowl turns annoyed, and dismissive. 

"Yeah, me and everybody else," he mutters, and then waves a hand at her. "Except _you_ , of course," he adds, snidely, "because you're perfect at everything. I just build suits that can handle getting hit." 

Something's definitely eating him - it's not the comment, it's how he's not even putting any effort into it, so that it comes out slightly sullen and resentful instead of incisive and sharp. Natalia quirks an eyebrow. "Not if it's Thor," she says mildly, and he glares at her. 

"If Thor's trying to hit me I probably deserve it," he retorts and now she rolls her eyes at him. 

"I meant someone who can hit as hard as he can, and you know it," she says, _still_ mildly. Tony sends her back her roll of the eyes, except his is a lot more theatrical. 

"You know, I wasn't actually signing up for a master-class," he starts, as she ties up her kerchief and then takes a clean set of wraps from the bin. 

"That's the nice thing about me," she bats back at him, keeping her voice bland. "You never have to." 

"Jesus fuck, Romanoff," he snaps, "I'm just here to hit things."

"So hit them without dropping your fucking right," Natalia returns, paying most of her attention to cloth she's winding around her hands. "Bad technique is a fucking bad habit and you do not need to get smacked forty feet because you're making the same fucking mistake everyone else does." 

And it'd be fair to say that the sparring is kind of childish, from both of them, but in that much she's serious. Even in the suit, being tossed around is harder on his body than he admits. 

He gives her a long, hostile stare and then mimes strangling her in the air before turning back and hitting the screen to unpause his set. He hits the pads harder, now. A lot harder. 

Natalia rolls her eyes, privately this time, and drags one of the dummies over to where she wants to hit it, and more or less ignores him. 

Other than the one ostentatious moment of proving he hadn't paid any attention, though, Tony stops dropping his right. 

 

It's about a half hour before JARVIS' voice cuts into their practice-violence, with a little less blandness than usual. 

"Sir," he says, and it's clearly a sentence all by itself: _sir_ , followed by a full stop before he goes on. "If you continue much longer you will be significantly increasing your risk of accumulated strain - " 

"Yeah, I got it," Tony says, irritably, and hits one of the contact pads one last time just to show nobody's the boss of him, not even his own AI. Then he hits the control pad and the machine goes dark. He wipes his face with the towel he's been ignoring up till now, and drinks from the water-bottle he's also been ignoring up until now, and Natalia's honestly a little impressed by the basic self-care, considering the mood he's clearly in. He might have been ignoring them until now, but he has a water-bottle, and he has a towel. 

She doesn't have either, but that's just because she hasn't bothered to grab a bottle out of the mini-fridge or a towel out of the basket. And she doesn't have a habit of ignoring little things like bodily needs until she keels over because of her sublimated self-loathing. She might have _other_ bad habits, but she doesn't have that one. 

Tony does. So she really is a bit impressed to see him bothering to hydrate and use something effective to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. 

For a moment he stands there, though, staring at the ground just in front of him and rubbing his forehead. Like he's arguing with himself about something. He does that for almost a minute before he says, "You know, I used to get drunk when I felt like this."

He says it loud enough to be clear he's talking to Natalia, not himself or even JARVIS. She finishes her strike and steps back to look at him, resting her hands on her waist and tilting her head. 

"You also used to wake up mostly naked in someone else's house - if you were lucky," she points out. "Either so hung-over you could barely see straight or still drunk, usually with people you didn't remember going to bed with, and with Happy frantically trying to figure out where the fuck you'd gone." She quirks an eyebrow at him. "Honestly when I first started doing background on you I was baffled how you lived long enough for people to start trying to blow you up." 

It's a veiled compliment so of course he deflects it. "You're exaggerating, I only did that twice - no, three times," he says dismissively, waving the hand still holding the towel like he's wiping away her point. 

"Four," JARVIS corrects, back to bland as bland can be, and Tony shoots an irritable glance upwards. Natalia suppresses a smile.

"There was not four," Tony says, firmly, and then looks like he's puzzled, searching his memory. "When was four?" he demands, like there is even the slightest chance he's right and JARVIS is wrong. 

"Miss Bledworth," JARVIS starts and gets interrupted by Tony's growl. Natalia raises the other eyebrow and Tony makes another irritable noise. He turns away and throws the towel into the "used" bin with more force than he strictly needs to.

"Fuck her," he says, or snaps, "she was evil, she doesn't count." 

There's a logic to that, but it's a very Stark logic. Years ago, now, she made a private commitment not to let Stark logic go unquestioned, so Natalia says, "Wouldn't that make her count _more_?" 

"No," Tony says, barely less of a snap than before. "I've blocked all memory of her, she doesn't count. For or about anything. She was a conniving vicious snake. She didn't happen." 

Natalia looks at him, thoughtful. "Bledworth. That's the one who almost got you to propo - " 

" _Yes_ ," Tony says, and this time it is a snap, which is fair: Natalia'd been angling for one. He glares at her as she pretends innocent interest in the training-dummy. "Like I said," he growls. "She's evil." 

Natalia thinks back over the briefer but still extensive background on Olivia Bledworth that'd been attached to Tony's file, and says, "Fair." His hackles settle a little. 

Natalia _looks_ at him for a long moment, assessing him as he finishes the water in the bottle, and then sighs. "Tony," she adds, patiently, and he looks at her with a sharp frown. "Go upstairs and offer Pepper a neck-rub. _Don't_ go back to the lab. Whichever lab," she further elaborates, before he can ask, because he's about to, "any lab, don't go to one, or your office, or any other fucking thing. Just don't. Go upstairs, eat some real fucking food and make the love of your life happy. _That_ will make you feel better. This shit," she gestures to the room, "won't. Neither will work." 

Tony Stark is the _worst_ about refusing to do the thing that'll actually make him feel better, and doing all the things he thinks should fix it instead. He's actually worse than James, which is fucking awful - at least when James is doing it he _knows_ he's doing it and he's probably doing it because he can't help it. And if you give him half an excuse, he'll stop; he just can't quite get past the block himself. 

Tony'll just keep doing it. For years. It is the worst fucking habit. 

"What are you, my mother?" Tony demands, glaring at her. Absently, Natalia realizes that she's not going to get anything from hitting things anymore, either - the interruption having totally derailed that as a possible outlet - and starts to peel the wraps off her hands. 

"Firstly," she says, "as far as repartee goes, that was pathetic and just proves my point, and secondly," she pushes on when he looks like he's going to say something, so that he folds his arms like he's all of five years old, "you are fifteen years _older_ than me which would make the time paradox there just a _little_ bit complicated." 

And if hitting things isn't going to do anything for her anymore, the expression of mingled betrayal-indignation-faux!fury-and-suppressed-amusement that gets her does. Natalia mentally awards herself the metaphorical point for this undeclared, unacknowledged match. Which isn't bad, given the inside of her head still feels like an upended bucket of rocks. 

"Why," he asks, eventually. "Why would you do that. Why would you say that. Why." They aren't questions. They just have a question shape to them, to indicate just how horrible she'd just been and imply it was beyond human understanding. Natalia snorts. 

"So you'll stop trying to score points and just go upstairs already?" she replies, sweetly. Then she lets the sweet turn arch, "Possibly so you can prove to yourself you're not actually that old." 

She awards herself a few more points for _this_ look. She returns a very blandly attentive one. 

"You are a terrible person," he informs her, jabbing a stern finger at her just for emphasis. "I am going to go, and you can just . . . stay here. And be terrible." 

She rolls her eyes again, all the more at his admonitory pointing as he retreats. 

She's not sure she feels _better_ , exactly, but she doesn't feel worse, and she does think maybe she can at least _sit still_ for a while now. 

 

Natalia ends up going to Clint's suite to shower. 

There's something . . . real, something _normal_ about Clint's space, any space he makes his own, which is kind of ridiculous when you stop and think about it. There's not much about Clint Barton that's normal _even_ compared to - for instance - her. But it's there anyway. It's difficult to pin down into words. 

It's being able, she thinks, mouth quirking a little, to flip through a few images of lofts and go "there, make it like that," and be _done_ designing your own whole floor and suite. And be happy with it. Something like that, anyway. 

She sits on the floor of his shower for a while, arms wrapped around her knees and eyes closed, letting the water run over her. Spending time in hot water, bath or shower, is always something that helps a little. It's an . . .assertion of her world, something like that: proof that she can decide to sit, without any practical purpose, until she's tired of hot water. She gets to decide that. Nobody else. It's something she didn't have, before they sent Clint to kill her. 

Natalia sits there until the smell that insinuates its way in tells her that Clint's decided to cook _something_ edible, and that it used to be an animal. Then she turns the shower off and towels herself and her hair dry enough not to drip on her shoulders, pulls on her clean clothes, and makes her way out of the bathroom and around to the kitchen via the door, where she'd left her phone. 

"What are you cooking?" she calls. 

"Dead cow," is what she gets back, and she wonders if there _is_ something in the air, if _everyone's_ in a damn Mood. She should text Maria and find out. Or Sam. Possibly _and_ Sam. At least (she supposes) Clint's Mood probably isn't full of sharp edges - his Midwestern mostly shows through when he feels like trolling people, not when he wants to strangle them. 

Coming into the kitchen, Natalia manages between smell and the ingredients out on the counter to identify stroganoff (American variation, American name) and give him a dire look. "If you start singing anything from that fucking movie," she says, evenly, "I will drown you in your own sink." 

Clint grins at her, so she increases the level on the Dire. She knows the sheer level of her hatred for the Don Bluth _Anastasia_ is irrationally high, but she hates it anyway, and hates even more how easily the music gets stuck in her head. It was the one, single thing that made her regret taking on the Anglicized version of her name - somehow the difference between -ov and -off really did make a difference to whether or not people who remembered that _stupid_ film made the connection. 

On the other hand, it also made the difference between being noticed and being invisible. 

The damn movie is the only thing she ever actually _snapped_ at a SHIELD colleague over, but fortunately she only had to do it once. After that, the issue made it into the unofficial (but very much real, printed and carefully curated) SHIELD Recruit Handbook and she never heard about it again. Except from Barton, when he was being a shit-head. 

He'd even been the fucking bat once for Hallowe'en and she'd almost shot him. Now, he looks innocent and then, after exactly the right beat, adds, "Besides, you like stroganoff." 

Natalia jabs him hard in the side with one knuckle extended and then pulls her phone out of her back pocket. She hands it over, unlocked and showing Steve's text, as she demands, "What did you tell him?"

Clint takes the phone, putting the wooden spoon he's using to stir down on the counter. He also says, "I want you to appreciate how much of an effort I'm making not to ask how you're so sure I told anyone anything, _or_ asking who you mean," and yeah, everyone's in a Mood, although thankfully Clint's working to moderate his as hard as she is. 

"I'll put a sticker in your workbook," she replies, only a little sourly, "but seriously, what did you say?" 

Clint's eyebrows have drawn together while she said it and he read the screen. It's just a little, the tiniest frown line showing, but Natalia knows him. 

"Damn," he says, mostly to the screen and in a kind of absent, to-himself-way. "I was kinda hoping I was wrong there." 

He glances at her and shrugs. "A while ago I caught Barnes looking at something about you between here and here," and he gestures on himself between chin and chest, "with a kind of intense expression, but only when nobody else was looking. Complete fucking accident, too - he's good at knowing when anyone's watching him, so I didn't stick with it, but I was pretty sure. Then because I was looking specifically, I noticed him do it a few more times, again when no one else would've seen. Including me, if I didn't have a reason. Now, since I'm pretty sure he actually doesn't have _any_ desire to fuck you - " 

Natalia snorts: as far as she can tell, anyone but Steve might as well be a tree, and even with Steve it's not your _standard_ kind of lust by any means. It's definitely lust, but one that comes from . . . all kinds of things, all of them deeply rooted in the psyche, and at this point _without_ those things, Natalia's pretty sure no part of James' mind or body knows how to combine the ideas of sex, himself, and anyone else. 

That might change some day, but right now really and truly, anyone but Steve might as well be a tree. To a _non_ -dendrophile. 

" - and if he wanted to cut your throat that bad," Clint goes on, "I figure he'd've already done it, I spent some time trying to figure out what the hell he could be caring so much about. Decided it had to be your necklace." He tosses her phone back to her, screen turned off. 

For a minute Natalia tries to turn that around until it makes some kind of sense, but it doesn't work. The only thing the necklace _means_ is _Barton_ ; she found it in Tiffany's and got . . . weirdly caught by the idea of having found something like that in so normal a place. Something like, but not quite exactly like, amusement at the whole thing was strong enough for her to buy it. And for reasons that are the kind of obvious neither of them talk about because it's uncomfortable, she likes wearing it. 

But that's it. There's nothing else to it. She gives him the full puzzled-disbelieving frown, hooking a finger under the chain. "This?" she asks. "Why?" And she adds, "He doesn't want to fuck you, either." 

Clint snorts a soft laugh and looks like he's about to say something. 

Then he stops. He gives her a thinking-frown for a second and then drags one hand over his face, while she waits, tilting her head and looking quizzical at him. 

"Long story short," he says, "since I just realized that if I don't go for the whole story there's no way in hell this is going to be anything less than a kinda annoying game of twenty questions: pretty sure Barnes has it in his head - at least in the back of his head - he's not allowed to . . . show any kind of anything that implies - "

He stops, and sighs, and holds up one hand in a _wait a second_ gesture before getting a beer out of the fridge while she stands, arms folded and leaning against the counter, now giving him a bemused and puzzled look. He clearly thinks she's going to miss something important, and while that does happen sometimes because the blank spots in her life can be unexpected and because while she knows most things about most people a lot of it is like puzzle-pieces that apply to a different species instead of something she viscerally understands, it doesn't happen often and isn't something she'd associate with anything about James. 

"Starting from the beginning," Clint says, twisting off the cap. "And okay yes, this is a little bit twenty questions but there's a reason, just trust me." 

Natalia gives him a Look, but turns to settle her back more comfortably against the counter and gives him the benefit of the doubt. 

"What do you figure," he says, after taking a drink of the beer, "that bastard Pierce _actually_ thought about his favourite weapon?" 

Natalia doesn't even have to think about that one. "Total and complete disgust," she answers immediately, and then has a second thought and adds, "probably just made a whole hell of a lot worse by just how hard _that much_ control was hitting all his kinks, and how much he wouldn't be admitting that to himself, leading him to project the cause of the disgust _onto_ his asset rather than accepting any part of it derived from an internal locus of control." 

Pierce is not a mystery. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, Natalia'd very, very deliberately turned it back on Alexander Pierce. He'd managed to hide himself well, _very_ well, but men like him were like a coded message: unintelligible without the key, but once you had that key, everything became obvious.

And everything did become obvious, immediately, and while his death made it entirely irrelevant Natalia is quite secure in her understanding of that man. For someone like him, power was everything. 

Not that she hadn't picked up the edges of the thing about power, from what little she'd encountered him before Insight, but it was almost impossible to find a man in high diplomatic or political circles who _didn't_ have a thing about power, so without knowing the rest it hadn't been remarkable. And he only showed the edges. He probably only _acknowledged_ the edges. He'd been quite good at hiding, including from himself, which was why he could push on through what he did thinking it was actually the right thing. Because he did. 

Pierce was never anything less than a true believer in the moral rightness and justice of his cause and his actions. And he could be that way because he was very, very good at hiding things about himself he didn't want to acknowledge. It's just that what he was hiding was simple. 

He probably thought it was complicated. Men like him usually do. And they're almost always wrong. 

But what she knows means knowing how much his own response to his mind-wiped weapon would disgust him, for what it implied about him and his lack of control over himself and his own desires. The ways in which the Winter Soldier would also have embodied, to Pierce, the things he considered most contemptible about human beings - uncontrolled violence, submission, basic instincts - would only make it worse. 

Humans are predictable, when that kind of thing happens. When your feelings disgust you, blame it on whatever makes you feel that way. That he and his had _made_ the Soldier that way, and that their own ends required it would just. . . not strike him as mattering, meaning anything, because of all of the things he was hiding from himself. 

Pierce, in hindsight, disgusts _her_ for reasons purely inverted: he lied to himself about himself and despised his own shadow, to borrow Jung, out of a kind of wilful ignorance. Natalia can see all of it, without any lies, even knowing the pieces in herself that were exactly the same as pieces of him, and as a result can't even manage pity, and bottoms out in contempt. 

"Right," Clint agrees, his voice surfing over the top of the almost unconscious reflection. "Now what do you figure the chances are of Barnes _missing_ that, even in whatever . . . " Clint waves one hand vaguely, "state he'd've been in?" 

"No chance," she says, and she still doesn't need to think about it. "I doubt he understood what he was picking up, or had a name for it, but you can see how he watches Steve." 

And almost never sees _anything_ but every single hint that could be interpreted as disapproval, unhappiness, upset, frustration. It's _almost_ funny, the contrast between how _well_ James can read fear, anger, contempt, aggression, everything on that scale of human emotions, and how everything else might as well be, not even Greek, but patterns in ultraviolet light. Never worse than with Steve, either. It's almost funny, but it isn't. 

It is morbidly fascinating. Natalia has to admit that. 

"Right," Clint says again. "Okay, now. Taking _that_ as the foundations, going back to 'why' about the necklace - " and Natalia starts to maybe grasp the thought, except . . . she frowns, as Clint goes on. 

"He's jealous. Well," Clint interrupts himself, "envious, if you want to get technical." 

Natalia ends up with a brief, tight smile: one of their colleagues used to get ridiculously picky about the precise meanings of words. Pointing out the natural shifts in language and how they were unavoidable could end you up on his blacklist for _months_ , and using a colloquially shifted meaning - like collapsing "envy" and "jealousy" - was the perfect invitation for a lecture on the decay of language.

He's dead now, another victim of Insight and its fallout. So many of them are.

Clint goes on, "You get to just casually wear something that says you're connected to someone important to you. Something that's almost like an official badge, stamp of association, maybe even possession."

Here Clint goes bland and Natalia focuses on his face enough to give him the irritable look he's going for. But then his bland fades back into serious, and he says, "He can't do that. It's not allowed. He's . . ." Clint shrugs, opening one hand in a silent gesture of _I-don't-even-know_ , "the necessary evil, the dirty secret." Clint sighs. "He does all the shit that would pollute everyone else, because he's already so polluted it doesn't matter. So he doesn't get to wear the t-shirt that says _I'm With Stupid_. Not in his own head, anyway. He envies the fuck out of you, because you do." 

He leaves unspoken the part where James sees a lot of the places where he and Natalia share damage, which would also influence how he felt about this: if they parallel one another, and they do sometimes, then it's _really_ going to ache, that she can do this and he can't. But Natalia only sort of glancingly thinks of that, because she's trying to actually . . . internalize, absorb, what Clint's just said. 

That he has just told her that James sees himself as not being _allowed_ . . . well, anything that might imply he had an affiliation with Steve, a claim on Steve. And that part she could almost see, except that it's not like anyone would _know_ , everyone who would ever see him already - 

Natalia stares at him. She knows she's staring. She knows she probably looks like he just tried to tell her the sky's made of liquorice or maybe that Elizabeth of Windsor just took up pole dancing. Part of her is even taking in what he's saying and gets it, it's just . . . 

"I'm having difficulty with this," she says - unnecessarily, inasmuch as Clint already _knows_ that, it's obvious, but needfully, inasmuch as she's admitting that she's noticed. "It's not - " she stops, frowning. "It doesn't work. Make sense. That's not just locking the barn door after the horse is stolen, that's like . . . locking the barn door when there's no _barn_ left." 

"Yeeeah," Clint says, drawing out the word with a kind of half-wince, "only if you're thinking about the practical side of it, Tasha. And only if you're thinking about it with any kind of sanity. Because first off, most of the world still doesn't know about him - "

" _Thankfully_ ," Natalia interjects, because she's still bracing herself for the day that changes and how much _mess_ that brings down on, well, everyone. She feels it for them because she doesn't like seeing shit falling on anyone she likes, but she feels it for everyone else too, including herself, because it's going to _splatter_. 

" - you're not wrong," Clint acknowledges, "but that's not the point here. The point is they don't." 

"We do," she objects. He wobbles his hand back and forth out in front of him. 

"We know that because Steve's invested as fuck, he's doing what he's doing. _You_ know exactly one bit of territorial claim he has staked, and that's over first rights to keeping Steve _safe_ \- obviously I know too but that's besides the point, you were the only one really _there_. And that's it, Nat. We might think other stuff, but he can't control what we think. Just what we know. And all we _know_ is his claim to the right to protect Steve. That's it." 

Natalia tries to take that in, and it gets stuck. Clint sighs, and takes another drink of his beer. "It's not about other people, Tasha. Not mostly - not about how they perceive stuff, anyway. It's about . . . reality, I guess. Not what people think, what _is_. And what _is_ . . . is that he doesn't get to have the right to do that." 

She understands what Clint's saying. She does. But it's like there's a weird mental swamp in the way, one that's made of the bits that keep insisting he's wrong. Not _wanting_ him to be wrong, it's not anything like that, she doesn't . . . really care, but that he's wrong in the way he'd be wrong if he were telling her that two plus two equals elephant. She can see the trail, it's just - 

Clint shrugs. "You know he thinks he's poison, Tasha," he points out, and Natalia shakes her head - not in denial, but granting the point so completely it doesn't need to be said. 

"But it's - " But she can't think what "it" is. After a second or two she crosses over to lean on the counter right beside him, frowning, her arms folded, and demands, "Why am I not getting this?" 

Clint's half-smile is wry. He puts an arm around her shoulders, rests his hand against the opposite side of her head and pulls her over to kiss her hair, briefly. 

"Because you're kinda out of it right now, maybe, and you're stuck on what's the same between you two, instead of what's different?" he suggests. "So it makes sense to hide stuff if they're keeping secrets, but not anything else, because you never felt that way. They might need to keep you a secret, but that's not quite the same thing." 

Natalia thinks about that and nods, slowly. Clint goes on, "You were their star, Tasha. You were their fucking treasure - all of you, but especially _you_. You were everything they wanted," and she snorts softly and Clint acknowledges, "right up until you left them, anyway. They were goddamn proud of you and you knew it. And there's bunch of possible reasons for that but the reason it couldn't be _different_ is because," and he sighs, "they had to make you love them. Needed you to want their approval, not just want to appease them or make the bad stuff stop. And to do that you have to give somebody some way they can win, some way they _can_ do things right, and _get_ that approval. Fear and pain only work when they're still pushing; they needed you to excel, push yourselves even when they weren't around and wouldn't be for days. For that, the stick isn't good enough, you have to have a carrot, too." 

"They just had to put him back in the chair," she says, distantly, filling that in. 

"That, and Pierce got his accidental head-start," Clint agrees, and Natalia grimaces. Frankly, it almost makes her _uneasy_ how well Steve appears to have come to terms with that, given what it is, and Clint acknowledges the grimace with a movement of his hand. 

"And then most importantly, all he was for was killing people, maybe torturing," Clint says, soberly. "He didn't operate independently, they never had to _stop_ pushing. You had to function around human beings and look like whole people, he didn't."

He shrugs. "You can motivate someone great with soul-crippling shame, you just can't keep it from showing. I mean, look at every meltdown Stark's ever had," he adds, waving one hand. "It's either fear, shame or both. Humans don't work well under that shit. Not as humans. Not and be able to look okay. Except they didn't want him to be human anyway, so fuck, who cares?" 

Natalia scrubs her face with both hands. "That's fucked up," she says. 

"Yeah," Clint says, voice so deadpan-casual he might as well just hold up a card that says _I'm being ironic_. "The weird life-long cult indoctrination centred around an uncomfortably eroticised but totally unobtainable surrogate father is definitely way less - " 

She elbows him hard in the side. "In this case the outcome _is_ more fucked up, asshole," she says, not-quite-acidly, not quite irritated. "And you can't actually argue with that one so don't try." 

Clint holds up one hand in acknowledgement. "Yeah, fair enough," he says. "But that's the thing that's making it stick sideways in your head, I think. Barnes isn't worried about other people thinking he's laid a claim or anything, he's worried because he's not allowed to _do_ it. If he's worried about what anyone thinks it's Steve, and it's all subconscious, and the worry's only because he wouldn't want to even sort of imply he'd do something that horrible. Because he's the. . . . " Clint turns his hand palm up and then lets it fall. "I dunno. Metaphysical equivalent of a gore and sewage spattered corpse. I mean Steve's clearly got him to a point where the part where Steve'll follow him everywhere and anywhere and is at least going to make his _own_ life miserable if his best friend disappears again is something he's given up arguing with, but that just means Steve's a stubborn martyr who doesn't know what's good for him. Doesn't mean Barnes making any kind of assumption isn't polluting him." 

"Yeah, no," Natalia says, "that's definitely more fucked up." 

She feels like she's got a handle on it all, by now. But there's still an echo of a pre-adolescent girl in her head, staring at James like he's insane. Clint's right about her, she thinks, and maybe about the rest of the girls who were never really her sisters. But definitely about her. All she ever wanted was _their_ approval - teacher, trainer, handler, knowing they were pleased with her was like a drug. 

It was the psychological bargain, going on so deep she had no idea there even was one: she gave them everything, and they gave her the pride and praise and approval that bathed her whole psyche in warmth and private contented pleasure. If they'd actually stopped living up to their end of the deal, she realizes, it wouldn't've taken very long for her to resent the fuck out of them for it, and for the whole thing to dissolve. 

Maybe, she thinks distantly, that's part of why it did. The last pieces. That wasn't good enough anymore. She'd seen there might be something else, something more, and - 

And . . . something twigs. "No," she says, slowly. Clint looks at her in surprise and she closes her eyes and shakes her head. "You're wrong. A little bit, I mean." 

"This has happened before," Clint replies, equably, and she opens her eyes to roll them at him a bit. 

"No, I mean there's another piece, drama-queen," she retorts. She rakes her fingers through her hair, pulling it back from her face and sighs. "James would have known how Pierce felt," she tells him. Explains. "Subconsciously. But you know I guarantee you that's not what Pierce said, that's not what Pierce _thought_ he was showing. That's not how he worked. You're right that they needed us to work, function alone as people, but Pierce was skating in on Steve's trail. He needed the Winter Soldier to worship him, and he got it, so - " 

Natalia pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to articulate it, because it's a shape. "It's the rats and the stupid food pellets," she says. "That's how Pierce got in. Starving rat. No memory, no idea what's going on, no way out, nobody he _knows_ , and then suddenly there's this young man - at the time - and he still doesn't _know_ the guy but everything about him is hitting buttons that make him feel better. Safe, wanted, familiar, everything any human being wants. Starving rat, food pellet." 

"Okay," Clint agrees, in a go-on sort of voice. Natalia shrugs, folding her arms again. 

"And with a gun pointed at him and everything coming down around him, when Nick showed up at the Triskelion _one_ of the ploys Pierce tried was talking Nick round," she says. "And the core technique was praise and approval." 

"He used that a lot in his work," Clint says, thoughtfully, and Natalia blinks at him, momentarily derailed. "What," he says, mock-aloof, "I can't do background?" 

"No, you just only do background if you have to deal with someone," she counters. "And he's dead." 

"Yeah, but people like him don't actually die when they die," Clint tells her. "They're like a stain, they just keep going. Like Stalin." 

"If you start with Stalin right now I am walking out," she warns him, half-joking and half really, really not. He makes an exaggerated gesture of surrender, and it'd be awkward to kick him right now, so she just goes on, "Anyway. Point is, I will bet you money when it comes to what Pierce _said_ , at least half of it was either outright praise and adulation, or the kind of shit that's shaped around the idea that it _could_ be praise, if only you hadn't screwed up. So you have what he's saying, and then you've got all the little subtle signs of everything that contradict what he's saying flat out, that he doesn't know he's sending and James doesn't understand that he's picking up, so . . ." she half-shrugs. "What he says only means anything right when he's saying it. And he's the only thing that matters in the whole damn universe - the _only_ thing that brings anything good." 

Clint looks thoughtful and nods, slowly. "Starving rat, single unpredictable and unreliable source of pellets." 

"Which are all making you sick anyway," Natalia elaborates on the metaphor, "but they're all there is so clearly if they're making you sick the problem is with you." 

She reaches over and takes Clint's beer so she can take a swig. "That's the piece I couldn't get," she finishes. 

Clint leans back on the counter, folds his arms and looks at the ceiling for a moment before he says, "Okay no, you win, that is more fucked up." 

It startles Natalia into laughing, and she takes another drink of beer, as Clint goes on, "Congratulations, you now have only the _second_ most fucked up . . . whatever," he waves one hand dismissively, "when it comes to that particular aspect of shit. Relationships with authority, background wiring. Whatever." 

"What does that make you?" she demands and he looks innocent. 

"I have a perfectly healthy relationship with authority," he says. Natalia snorts. 

"Barton you don't have _any_ relationship with authority," she points out. 

"That counts as healthy," Clint insists, and she shakes her head, half-smiling. 

"Keep telling yourself that," she replies, handing him back his beer. "Anyway. So you told Steve all - most," she corrects herself, "of that." 

Clint grimaces. "Sorta. Like I said, I was hoping I was wrong, so I just pointed out the envy thing with the necklace and how James' passing up a hell of an opportunity to give him shit without even saying anything, because he never touches the shit Tony gave him. And that?" 

"Is not like him," Natalia agrees. 

And that's probably the other part of why it'd been hard to grasp, hard to internalize the depth of the whole thing - the veneer of normal, balanced friendship, of a healthy, natural bond on both sides, with only the total inability to relate to or display affectionate emotions without the shield of mutual aggravation being wrong with it. Even if you know what it is, know that an inevitable _part_ of the rest of it is that it would drive James to try and be that person even if he didn't want to (and he does, but that's not the point), it's still . . . misleading on some visceral level. 

But that doesn't matter: it's been important to James to make sure Steve never loses the boundary between himself and his role for a long time, much longer than he's been this vulnerable to him, and mostly that manifests in giving him endless shit, grief and mockery about it. 

"Yeah. So that was the stuff I actually knew," Clint concludes. "For sure, I mean. So that's what I told him. I was kind of hoping he'd come to some kind of different, less fucking awful conclusion than I did. I know better, but I was kind of hoping anyway." 

They have a moment of silence in recognition of that kind of hope, and how stupid they both know it is, and how they still cradle that kind of hope close sometimes. Then Clint shrugs. "But hey, at least he just fucking straight-up asked you." 

"I know," Natalia replies, letting herself finally relax away from trying to wrap her head around _understanding_ now that she'd got close enough that it didn't feel like Clint was trying to say _red and blue make desk_ anymore. "If the whole text didn't scream that it's from him, and if it weren't clearly something he's to upset about for teasing, I would've been tempted to ask who he was and what he'd done with the real Steve Rogers." 

After a second more of sorting her thoughts out, she puts her hand to her face again and starts laughing. Clint gives her a quizzical look, drinking the last of the beer. 

"It's not just fucked up," she notes. "It's fucking _ironic_ ," and Clint's expression shifts to understanding, and amusement. 

"What," he says dryly, "you mean the part where Steve's inner middle-schooler still obviously worries about whether his best friend thinks he's cool enough to hang out with? A _lot_? Not to mention about whether he _is_ cool enough for his best friend to hang out with and he's not somehow secretly tricking said best friend into doing it when he isn't? Like, constantly?" 

"Yeah," Natalia confirms, covering her eyes with one hand briefly. "Exactly that part. Fuck." 

"Yeah, well," Clint draws out the words, "what's a little weird pathology among superheroes?" 

Natalia elbows him, but less hard than the last time. "I still hate that word." Clint gives her an amused look but doesn't reply. Just rinses out his beer bottle and drops it in the recycling under the sink before turning back to the stroganoff which, for a miracle, hasn't burned. 

Food. Food would probably be good, Natalia thinks. Probably help. 

At his request, she passes him the cream from the fridge. After a beat, to let all the previous stuff sit and be done with it before they move on, she asks, "Any idea why Tony's got something up his ass?" 

"No," Clint says, following her on that, "except it's up Banner's too, and given that probably Ross's and who knows maybe even Van Dyne's and Cho's if either of them was here today but I gotta admit at a certain point I decided social togetherness time was officially not worth it anymore and went and said hi to half the dogs in the park." 

Natalia shoots him an amused look. "What, only half?" she asks, dryly. 

She gets him another beer and gets herself one, while she's at it. This time he's managed to get a microbrew she's never even heard of that looks like it's from Canada, and she doesn't even want to know how. 

"Some people are really serious about their pooch-and-me exercise routines and made their dogs keep running," Clint retorts. He turns down the heat to let stuff simmer for a couple minutes. Natalia smiles slightly and shakes her head, giving him a sideways look. 

"I did consider a heroin bender," he answers the look, dryly, "but decided the dogs were less work." Then he shrugs one more time. "Everybody's just probably hitting sharp edges for unrelated reasons all at the same time," he adds. "Happens, you know that. It'll pass, possibly after everyone's tried to rip everyone else's face off, and life'll go on." 

"Barton," Natalia points out. He looks at her, direct, eyebrows raised in a question. She says, "You always say life'll go on." 

"Always does," he replies. "Just. . . sometimes without you in it anymore. Or sometimes it's a really miserable kind of life. Or whatever. But life still goes on, in the general sense." 

He stirs the food and then takes the lid off the pot keeping the pasta warm. He reaches for a couple of plates. 

"I can't tell if that's comforting or as depressing as all fucking hell," Natalia informs him, after considering it for a moment. She adds, "And I don't want to think about it anymore." 

"So have a beer and go pick something for the idiot box to make noise about instead," Clint suggests, and that's probably a good call. 

 

A few hours later, when they've graduated from beer to the rum and gone from _So You Think You Can Dance?_ to _Hoarders_ and the idle peanut-gallery commentary on the latter that makes other people give them horrified looks, Natalia notes, "For the record, you're definitely cool enough to hang out with." 

"My status on the playground is secured," Clint replies, and passes her the popcorn. 

"Assuming I have any," Natalia qualifies. Clint starts to laugh. "You never know, I might've been a nerd," she adds, mildly aloof, and he slides down the couch a bit so that she takes his glass of rum away before he spills it. 

"Yeah, sure," he says, getting a hold of himself and sitting back up, taking his rum back. "In Opposite World." 

Natalia rolls her eyes and they watch the screen for a bit longer. Then Natalia notes, "You know, one day we're going to have to do one of these interventions for Rooke." 

Daisy Rooke, one of the few of their colleagues who _had_ made it through Insight Day and the following weeks alive, had only got _worse_ about her inability to throw anything away in the aftermath. 

Clint's silent for a few minutes before saying, "Maybe we'll get blown up by then," in a slightly hopeful tone of voice, and it's Natalia's turn to dissolve into laughter.


End file.
